by Anita Claire
“Over there, it’s a flatter space. We can pull out our pads to make it more comfortable,” he suggests.
“I don’t care if it’s flat, just make sure there isn’t any Poison Oak. I’m not spending the next few weeks scratching my backside.”
“Let me check.”
He heads down off the rock and into the brush. I watch his progress by the rustling foliage.
“What the hell?” Brody’s voice rings out.
“Brody?”
“Ana, come here.”
“There better not be any Poison Oak.”
“You’ve got to see this.”
I follow his voice and find Brody pointing to an area covered with Poison Oak.
“It looks like an old refrigerator,” he comments.
Under the brush, covered in Poison Oak, there’s a large object made of wood.
“I think it’s an icebox. I don’t think it’s ever seen electricity,” I say.
"How did it get here?”
We both look up at the ridge and I point.
“I’ll need to look at an old map. There were several ranches in this area. As the ranchers consolidated, the Open Space Preserve bought up some of their properties. Back then, the rancher’s idea of getting rid of waste was to dump it in a ravine.”
Brody takes off into the thick brush to check out the icebox.
“Hey what about that flat space?” I call after him.
“This could be our smoking gun.”
“It would have to be a lot worse than an old icebox.”
“Look at this! It looks like it once was a Model T.” Brody moves away a cover of overgrowth to expose a section of the rusted skeleton of an old car. Not much is left except the hood and cab, which still has its window, even though it’s all cracked.
“Weird. Don’t you feel like you’re in one of those movies? You know, one where the hero comes back towhat was once our civilization.”
Brody nods and he continues to make his way around it.
“I’ve walked through this creek bed before. I never saw any of this.”
“How could you? It's covered with Poison Oak and far enough away from any path you would take.”
“We should mark this spot.”
He stands with his hands on his hips and looks up at the ridge. “This ravine is deep, no one could walk down from there. The only way in or out is along this dry creek bed.” He points to a spot at the top of the ridge and draws an arc with his hand. “I bet that’s where they dumped it from.”
"I’ll mark it. We can check it out from the top. Let me get my pack. I’ll take some soil and plant samples. Maybe they dumped something more toxic than old vehicles and appliances.”
I head back to our packs to gather some of my things. I return to the spot I last saw him. “Brody! Brody? Where are you, Brody?”
“Over here.”
I wade through thick brush and uneven terrane to him.
“I think I might have found your smoking gun.”
“What? Where?”
Brody is standing about fifteen feet below me. There’s a welt in the land and thick vegetation covered with Poison Oak. He moves some brush. “Batteries. There must be thousands of them. They’re old and leaking. If this got in the water table….”
“Acid, lead, who knows what else.”
“We’d never have seen this from above.”
“And I’d have never walked through it since it’s covered in Poison Oak. Brody, you’ve got bare hands!”
He dismisses my concern and wades further into the area. I race back to my pack and pull out two pairs of gardening gloves, some Tecnu towelettes, and my Bentoquatam cream. Racing back to Brody, I find him still wading through the Poison Oak. I take the time to cover my hands and face with a second layer of the cream and pull on my gloves before I wade through the Poison Oak.
“Wait,” I order. I open the towelette packet and hand it to him. “Wash your hands carefully.”
He looks annoyed.
“Brody, this is Poison Oak. Do it.”
After he washes his hands I look down at the towelette. “Put it in your pocket.” I hand him the cream. “You should be thanking me. Hopefully, we’re getting the urushiol off your skin before it causes irritation.” After he applies the cream, I hand him the gloves.
“Pink, really?”
“I guess I should have taken the pink and gave you the purple ones.”
“I’m man enough to rock pink.”
“Now we can investigate this area more thoroughly. When I first started working here, I got a hyper-reaction to Poison Oak. I had to go to the hospital after my face swelled up. Let’s just say, nothing about it was pretty.”
As Brody wades through the brush, I start taking soil samples.
“Shit,” he exclaims.
I stuff my supplies in my pocket and head toward him. He’s torn back some shrubs and moved a lot of Poison Oak, exposing a rusted old barrel.
“I don’t know what was once in this barrel, but I don’t think it was anything good.” He points to an old skull and crossbones label that is clearly marked hazardous.
“It’s sitting right where the bank overflows in the winter,” I gasp, feeling hollow inside.
“You better take some samples from around here.”
I reach in my pocket and pull out my phone. I start clicking away taking pictures of the barrel.
“If nothing else, this will get people moving. What kind of an idiot throws a barrel filled with hazardous waste off a cliff? What were they thinking?” I fume.
“Was our lion in this gully?”
“She loved this area. My intern and I were at the top of the east ridge last Wednesday and at the west ridge on Thursday. You and I skirted the other end of this area the first time we hiked.” I point to a spot lower down from the top of the ridge. “That’s where her den was. It’s only accessible to cats. We picked up scat from multiple locations around here. She didn’t need to come down here to be exposed to toxins. Lions are like people, they’re at the top trophic level. I’ve seen lots of signs indicating that deer have been here. The dear eats the poison-contaminated brush, it concentrates in their cells, the lion eats the deer, and over time that will make her very sick.”
With my sample containers in hand, I fill them with dirt and plant material making sure to mark their location on both my GPS and iPad map. I also take plenty of pictures. When I reach Brody, my heart sinks. He’s uncovered three more barrels.
“I was near this dump a number of different times. My intern and I never saw any of this.”
Brody is back to looking at the mess. “For some reason, I thought I would have been elated to find the smoking gun, but this only makes me feel depressed. What will you do now?”
“We still need to confirm that this is what got our cat sick. If she drank water from around here or ate animals that grazed in this area, well then, we probably found the problem. But even if this isn’t what made her sick now that we found this mess I need to come back with some people from the Open Space Preserve. They manage this area. A decision will need to be made on how to get this crap out of here and they will need to determine just how contaminated this soil is. They’ll need to figure out how to fund the clean-up. This site is on a dry creek that feeds into a reservoir that serves millions of people. This could turn into a superfund site.”
Brody’s gaze is on the ridgeline. “Whoever did this probably collected batteries from gas stations. And since he was already hauling off their hazardous materials, he probably offered to take other things that can’t be thrown away, too. He took their money to dispose of their toxic waste and dumped it here. He might not have thought he was doing anything wrong. He was depositing this crap far away from where people lived.”
“High-tech manufacturing uses a lot of chemicals. Back in the fifties and sixties, being a litterbug was considered benign,” I say.
“Like Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Day song.”
“I have no
idea what you’re talking about.”
“Alice’s Restaurant?” I shrug. “You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant,” he sings. “Nothing?” he questions as I shrug again. “My dad plays that song every year at Thanksgiving.”
“And it has to do with this dump, how?” I ask.
“The guy in the song gets arrested for dumping trash in a remote location. I assume Arlo was looking for the most benign reason to get arrested.”
“Today he would be considered an environmental terrorist.”
“And the times, they are a-changing,” Brody sings.
“Another of your dad’s songs?”
“Don’t you recognize Dylan? Didn’t your parents listen to rock from the sixties and seventies?”
“No, not really.”
“Wow, that music was the soundtrack of my childhood. My dad is convinced no good music has been produced since 1980.”
Brody walks up to me, puts his arm around my shoulder, pulls me close, and gives me a kiss. “I didn’t forget why we ventured over here.”
“In a dump? That’s leaking battery acid and is covered with Poison Oak?”
He runs his hands down to my butt. “We can find someplace else.”
“Yeah, but our clothes are covered in urushiol from the Poison Oak. You’re not getting near my bare skin until you strip and scrub down.
Brody delivers the most disappointed look I’ve ever seen.
“Hey, it’s an incentive to get back to the truck,” I tell him.
Chapter 20 – Brody – Bella
As Ana’s truck reaches Highway 280, my phone gets service and starts beeping. Note to self,get a satellite phone. I can’t afford to be out of reach for a whole weekend.
“Now that’s impressive. It sounds like you are a very popular person,” Ana comments.
I grunt in response. My job is great, something is always going on and I love being the boss, but it’s hard keeping up with all the communication. I check to see that if in the past thirty-six hours anything at work has exploded.
As Ana pulls in front of my apartment, my mind switches from work to her. My dick twitches. I’m glad work isn’t going to cockblock me tonight.
“Can I invite you up?”
“You think that line will work this weekend?”
“We can both take a shower, you know, scrub down and do a thorough tick check.”
“So you’re inviting me up for health reasons?”
“If that’s what it takes to get you naked and in my bed, I’ll go with it.”
“Wow, that was the most romantic proposition I’ve ever had.”
“That’s what you get when you hang out with me. I’m a real charmer.”
The two of us head into my building. She leans into me as we wait for the elevator. My fingers grasp her waist in anticipation.
“I’m up early, and when I say early, I’m at the gym by five a.m. You can sleep in, just shut the door behind you,” I explain.
“You’re not afraid I’m some creepy person who’ll look through your things?”
“Not much to look through, unless you’re interested in dressing up in men’s clothes.”
As we enter my apartment, my anticipation builds. I kick the door closed and instantly we are in each other’s arms. After a long kiss, she pulls away.
“I thought we were up here for health reasons.”
“Do we really need a shower?”
“Yes, ticks, Poison Oak…and there’re probably a few other things we can do in the shower.”
Without hesitation, I grab a hold of her hand and pull her into my bathroom. We undress quickly. Ana enters the shower first. I’m about to step in the shower, but I pause for a couple of seconds; she takes my breath away. With her head tipped back and water running suggestively down her body, she looks like an erotic painting.
It’s a little tricky having sex in the shower, kind of like Twister. I bend my body and hold on to the faucet so I don’t slip while getting the right leverage to plunge into her. The shower isn’t only a great place for singing.... As her gasps and moans echo off the walls, my pace picks up until I revel in the ecstasy of release.
After a quick rinse, I grab one of my towels and hand her the other towel. Quickly I dry off, then grab my toothbrush.
“I have an extra toothbrush.” I pull my pack of replacement toothbrush heads out of a drawer. “Since you like purple so much you can use this one.”
“My own toothbrush head, oh, Brody! That’s the nicest gift anyone’s ever given me,” she mocks as she checks out the toothbrush head I’m using. The line around the bottom is blue. “Brody, I thought we figured out that if I’m purple you’re pink.”
“I’m going to throw those pink gloves out.”
“Those are brand new gardening gloves.”
“Yeah, and I’m paying you back with your very own toothbrush head. Anyways, I thought backwoods researchers would use big, macho leather gloves.”
“Great idea, next time I’ll bring some and let you try to use them to collect soil samples.”
“Brush up, my alarm rings at four-thirty.”
***
My day is packed. By noon, five people have asked me about an e-mail that was sent during the weekend. Blowing them off, I wonder how I’ll catch up. Moving two meetings to take place on my flight to Houston doesn’t give me any time to check texts and e-mail.
My flight back from Houston gets me into SFO at two in the morning. As I drive home, my mind flashes back to Ana. Too bad she’s not waiting for me in my bed nowthat would be something to look forward to. Upon entering my apartment, I almost miss the note on my counter top.
Wonderful weekend, I’ll keep you posted on the hazardous wastes you found -- thank you -- Ana
In my bedroom, I find that the bed has been made. Now that’s a first. I wash up, crawl in bed, and as sleep takes me under, my last thought is about the smell of sex and Ana on my sheets.
The next morning, as I sit in a boring meeting, my mind moves to Ana. I stare at my phone, then send her a text.
Brody:Great weekend.
Ten minutes later she texts me back. With anticipation, I read her text.
Ana:I ransacked your apartment.
Brody:Did you find anything good?
Ana:Cookies with an expiration date of 2008.
Brody:Did our dump site match what got our lion sick?
Five minutes later my phone beeps, but I’m now too busy to check it. She doesn’t escape my thoughts though, this past weekend felt special.
***
After another weekend with Ana, when we go kayaking and hiking, I fly to Atlanta on Monday, St. Louis on Tuesday, and am back in the office on Wednesday. Late Wednesday morning, I race back to my desk to get the notes for my next meeting. My secretary runs after me.
“Brody, wait, I need to tell you—”
Blowing her off with a wave of my hand, I get to my office and shut the door. As I progress to my desk, the chair turns around slowly. For a split-second, adrenaline runs through me.
“What are you doing here?” I exclaim.
“You would know if you ever read your e-mail or texts,” my twin Bella imparts.
“Shit, Bella, I don’t have time to be your tour guide.” I drop off some papers and move the chair she’s in so I can reach a drawer to pull out one of my notebooks.
“Notebooks, how old school of you.”
“What are you doing here? Where’s your family?”
“You really didn’t read any of the e-mails I sent you.”
Not having the time to discuss this with her, I start to leave.
“Are you free for dinner?” she calls out after me.
“I have no idea. I’ll have to get back to you on that.” I’ve got the door open and am taking my first step out of my office when....
“Oh, Brody, are you saving dinner for your new girlfriend?” she teases.
“What?” I close my door and turn around to face her. She has the biggest C
heshire Cat smile.
“I thought so. You’re seeing thelion lady.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I overheard a couple of women talking about it in the bathroom. They were saying Ethan flew you and some lion lady to Davis.”
“What are you doing here anyways? And how did you get in my office?”
“If you read my e-mail, you’d know that I’m in town for a meeting. Your secretary was nice enough to let me wait for you in here. But I want to know about this lion lady.”
I start opening the door to head to my next meeting.
“It will be a lot easier if you tell me. If not, you’ll have a lot more questions to answer from Mom and Abuela. They’re already upset that you blew off Elizabeth’s friend, Gabby.”
“I’m thirty-four years old and you’re going to blackmail me?”
She barks out a laugh, hops up from my chair, and wraps her arm around mine as we exit my office.
“You can tell me about her as you head to your next meeting,” Bella says.
“It’s about ten feet from here. It’s in my conference room”
“Then you’ll need to talk fast.”
“Her name is Ana, she’s a scientist studying the effect of climate change on mountain lions.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard. When do I get to meet her?”
“How long are you in town for?”
“Just a couple of days, I have a two o’clock flight out on Friday.”
“Too bad, I’m not seeing Ana again until Friday night.”
“You’re not getting out of this so easy. I’m heading to my hotel. Clear up your schedule and we’ll eat dinner together tonight. Why don’t you bring her?”
She releases my arm as I move toward the conference room. I really don’t need all of the Finance team knowing my business. Damn, Bella is a pain when she has her mind set on something. I’m not going to get her off this.
“I’ll send you a text,” I concede in a low voice as I move her away from the door.
“Don’t blow me off,” she warns and she gives me a peck on the cheek. “I want to meet her, tonight. If you don’t call, I’ll get all the Walker women to stalk you down.”
